Elizabeth M. Childers was the fourth of ten children born in the area of Blount County, Alabama, to Kezziah D. Fry and James Childers, a farmer and sometime Justice of the Peace.
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Born about 1834, Elizabeth married the farmer John N. Wilson on December 10, 1853. He was the father of 7 children and had 5 more with Elizabeth. The Wilsons relocated to Searcy County, Arkansas, about 1858.
When the rumblings of war began in 1860, John Wilson joined an Arkansas Peace Society, also known as the Yellow Rag Boys. Along with others, he refused to enlist in the Confederate forces, but was forced to serve on pain of death. After making his way home partway through the war, he was bushwacked, likely by Confederate sympathizers. His teenage son escaped the attack and watched as his father was hanged.
The Wilson boy ran from Arkansas, joined another traveler and ended up in Illinois. Seeing a place of peace and plenty, he returned to Arkansas for his family. Elizabeth Wilson sold the farm for Confederate dollars and took her young sons to Illinois. The Wilson family legends are silent on the the intervening time before her marriage to George Vossler. How did she survive with small children and worthless money? Did she regret selling the farm?
George Vossler and Elizabeth Childers married in Macon County, Illinois, on October 30, 1866, and are last found in the 1870 census. Wilson legend says they went to Missouri and disappeared. The youngest Wilson boys were placed into the guardianship of their elder siblings in Searcy County in January of 1875. The two Vossler children next turn up in the Chicago city directories in the early 1890s.
Elizabeth's story is still unfinished. I want to know where she went and what happened to her. I am waiting for the day the right records come online. Then I can close the chapter for myself and all our collateral relatives.
The Childers family photo is an image of a daguerreotype scanned from
"Just a Branch" of the Cox, Yarborough and Childress Families.
Author Nelda Cox Eastman (deceased), Grand Prairie, Texas.
Courtesy of Suzy Burt, an editor of Blackburn and Fry family association newsletter.
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